Summary

In dealing with the intersection between Amazonia and frontiers, Amazonia, understood as a region, is a recent construction that cannot be confused with the Amazon as river. Its meaning is related to the idea of Panamazonia, a multinational region. In terms of frontiers, there is a distinction between borderlines with their main ramifications, borderlands, and internal frontiers. From a historical point of view, both, borderlines and “internal frontiers” approaches must be taken into account simultaneously when dealing with the Amazonian frontiers.

From a chronological point of view, in brief, a borderline was traced in the late 15th century in a contest between the Portuguese and the Castile and Aragon crowns over the Atlantic. At the beginning of the 16th century, Iberian people arrived at Pará, what today is part of Brazil. They found transformed lowlands landscapes by indigenous people of several linguistic and ethnic origins. The British, Dutch, and French crowns were able to settle in the “Caribbean” Amazonia, the Guianas. Later on, during the second part of the 17th century, Portuguese people started to expand successfully from the east to the west following up the Big River. The Spanish crown only decided to deal with Portuguese expansion in the middle of the 18th century through diplomatic negotiations. Well into the 19th century definitive demarcations in the framework of nation-state building became evident, and this becomes a priority for these independent nation-states, particularly due to the economic importance of two highly valued commodities: quinine, and rubber. The process of establishing borderlines became firmly decided around the middle of the 20th century, and with few exceptions.

While the process of establishing borders has almost concluded, the material appropriation of frontier landscapes is still taking place. The current appropriation of Amazonian lands is, probably, in its last stage. It is extremely conflictive in some cases, such as in Peru and Colombia, because of internal armed conflict, illegal extractivism, and drug dealing. It also involves a dispute between forces associated with development projects and forces of conservation during the late 20th century and the turning of this new century, all in a context of the environmental globalization of the Amazonia. This has implied a redefinition of the territorial role of the Amazonian nation-states. Therefore, it is more proper to analyze this last stage as a political ecology of the appropriation of Amazonian frontiers.